


Rey Kéanaivar and the Dragons of Jakku

by Elsin



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Dragon Riders, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsin/pseuds/Elsin
Summary: In one world, Rey grows up on Jakku, a scavenger girl with no prospects beyond a continuation of that scavenger's life.In this one, she still grows up on Jakku, but she does it on the back of a dragon.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	Rey Kéanaivar and the Dragons of Jakku

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



When she's four years old, Rey is left with Unkar Plutt by her parents. He puts her to work immediately—there are things that even a small girl can do in a scavenger's empire. She has nimble fingers and a sharp enough mind to pick through scrap metal, and really that’s all he needs of her.

* * *

When she's six, he starts sending her out to other outposts and, more rarely, out into the desert to fetch things back for him—she's little and quick and very, very lucky. As a scavenger-child, that’s all you need; and anyway, most people know that Unkar Plutt likes her work well enough to take offense at someone else interfering with her or her jobs.

* * *

When she's seven, she meets the young ta-nahar dragon, out in the wastes—white as the midday sun and rare as the falling rain. And it's hurt too, badly so; one wing is torn nearly in half, silvery blood spilling out onto the sand.

Rey swallows back her nausea. In town, they call her Rey Kéacheuma—Rey the Healer—sometimes, for it's well known that if you can't afford a bacta patch, you go to Unkar Plutt's little scavenger girl and have her wrap your wounds. She'll do it for scrap metal and a smile, and the wound will heal faster. All Rey has ever done is press a little goodwill into her bandaging; she doesn't know how any of it works.

She breathes slowly, in and out, and carefully approaches the dragon. It squawks at her, and she frowns back.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she says, and though the dragon hisses shortly it lets her approach it.

Slowly, gently as she can, she straightens out the wing. It's almost three times her body length, and at least half again as wide, all long slender bones and delicate white sails between them. The dragon gives a pained whine as she moves the injury.

"I know, I know, it hurts. I’m sorry. I'm gonna try to help you, but you have to hold still."

And, amazingly, the dragon does as it's told. Rey settles her little hands over the wing's sail, and wills it better, and watches wide-eyed as it knits back together. It’s by far the most intensive healing she’s ever done; by far the most damage that she’s just _fixed_ with a wish and a will.

When she's done, her skin sticky with sweat and her hands shaking slightly, the dragon carefully flexes its wing and gives a sharp cry of joy. It spits fire up into the sky; Rey's hair and clothes are buffeted by the wind from its wings and heated by the flames, but she stands there unharmed, the dragon celebrating its freedom all around her.

The dragon’s joy does not last long. Less than a minute later, a deep growl rumbles through Rey’s bones, and the sand shakes beneath her feet. At her side the dragon stiffens, then scoops its neck under her so she’s sitting precariously on its back.

“What are you doing?” she yelps, small hands scrabbling for purchase at the scales of the dragon’s neck. The dragon, predictably, doesn’t answer in words; a faint reassurance ripples across Rey, though, and she swallows and doesn’t try to get off the dragon’s back.

This, as it turns out, is a good decision. Hardly a moment after she makes it, the rumbling roar comes closer and deeper and around the wreck of an old Star Destroyer stalks a wild chéka dragon. Rey sucks in a sharp breath; the chéka dragon is huge and muscular, with glittering, blinding golden scales and blood-red eyes. Its claws are black, but on one foot they’re dripping with thick silver blood.

Rey’s dragon shudders and shrinks back; it doesn’t do the sensible thing, which would be to flee. Rey scowls down at it.

“We need to go!” she snaps. “Come on!” She pats the dragon’s neck, not hard enough to really count as a smack. “We gotta _go!_ ”

There’s no fighting a full-grown wild dragon when you’re a little girl and a little dragon. The dragon Rey is riding shudders again, then turns.

They flee across the desert, low to the ground, weaving back and forth—the chéka dragon is persistent and angry, and it follows them longer than seems at all reasonable, occasionally breathing white-hot flames in their direction. Rey can’t tell if it’s too slow to hit them or if it isn’t _really_ trying; they slip just out of its claws time and time again as well.

Eventually they make it to a set of tall craggy hills which Rey has never seen before; the chéka dragon is big enough that it struggles to follow them, and when they disappear into a tunnel it loses track of them and, eventually, gives up and wanders away.

Rey slides off of the dragon’s back and sits, leaning against the wall, her whole body shaking slightly. She was just chased by a dragon. By a _dragon_ , a _naivar chéka_ no less! And she escaped on the back of a _naivar ta-nahar!_ A small hysterical giggle bubbles up in her chest, and she lets it out; the dragon looks at her quizzically.

“This has been a very weird day,” she says fervently. For a moment she hesitates. “I’m Rey,” she says. “I don’t suppose you have a name you could tell me?”

The dragon lets out a sound almost like a purr, but doesn’t say anything. It can’t. It—no, she. Rey’s getting a distinctly female vibe from the dragon; she can’t explain it but maybe it doesn’t matter whether or not she can _explain_ something like this.

“Can I give you a name?” she asks. “I’d like to have something to call you.”

The dragon makes a high thin trilling sound, and tilts her head at Rey, blinking enormous golden eyes. She doesn’t _seem_ offended.

“I could call you Élyuntéanin,” says Rey. “Only that’s a bit of a mouthful, so I could call you Ellie instead?”

The dragon blinks again, then slowly nods her head.

“All right, then,” says Rey. “Ellie it is. But, um, do you know how to get me home?”

Ellie makes a sound that could almost be a laugh on a more humanoid creature, and shows Rey the way.

* * *

When she's eight, Evia Sann sees her riding on Ellie's back while she's out scavenging, and goes to Unkar Plutt to hire her out as a jockey. From that time forward, her life changes. Her days are spent with Ellie, not in stolen moments but as what she's _supposed_ to be doing, training to fly in the Great Races all across Jakku.

She and Ellie aren't big enough to be heavyweight, or even standard class; they're trick, which is by far the riskiest of courses, and as such they don't get padding or a mag-lock saddle or even a helmet. It's just Rey and Ellie, the lightest possible saddle between them, a pair of flight goggles on Rey's face, and the open sky before them.

Rey loves it.

* * *

When she's nine, she flies her first race. She and Ellie don't win—don't even make top ten—but they finish the course without a scratch on either of them, which is more than even the winner can say.

Evia asks Rey how they do it, and she shrugs; it's instinct, mostly, she thinks, and maybe sometimes something deeper—but she doesn't know what, and she says nothing.

* * *

On her eleventh birthday, Rey wins the Jakku Open for the first time. There's a shallow gash along her left cheekbone, just under her goggles, from a particularly daring maneuver that she and Ellie pulled that kicked up a bit more debris than either of them expected; apart from that neither is hurt.

Rey grins wildly, even though it hurts her cheek to do so, and does another daring flyby of the stands as they announce the winners.

"Good job," says Evia, clapping her on the shoulder once she's landed and dismounted to accept her winnings. "That was some flying out there, kid."

"Broke my streak, though," Rey says cheerfully, gesturing to her bloody cheek. This is the first time she’s been visibly hurt during a race.

Two months earlier, unbeknownst to Rey, the First Order blocked some of Jakku's major shipping routes; all she knows is that there's no bacta for minor cuts on children's faces. It doesn't occur to her to heal her own wound, and it ends up scarring—but that scar she wears as a point of pride.

No one calls her Rey Kéacheuma anymore, except a very few of those who knew her as a younger child. Instead they call her Rey Kéanaivar—Rey the Dragon.

* * *

At fourteen, Rey wins the Jakku Open for the second time, after two years of winning more or less everything _but_ that one race.

She doesn't lose it again.

* * *

In the off season, when no one’s running the dragon races and Rey has no reason to stay in the larger spaceports, she goes back to the fallen AT-AT she grew up in, just outside Niima Outpost. Ellie’s much bigger than she used to be, these days; so is Rey, of course, but not nearly so dramatically. It isn’t Rey who can no longer come inside.

There aren’t any _good_ jobs on Jakku. There’s no real way to make a stable life for yourself; even Unkar Plutt could fall if circumstances conspired for it. Even the titans of dragon racing—they, too, could fall, although most aspects of dragon racing are at least a little more stable than scavenging.

Whenever she returns, she takes the records she made while she was gone over to the wall, and etches in all the days she’s been gone for—it’s monotonous to do, but it calms her mind. Stepping back, she shakes her head—she’s been on Jakku a long time.

It doesn’t matter, though, that it’s been fifteen years. Her parents _are_ coming back.

They have to be.

* * *

That night she takes her dinner outside; it’s bland and rehydrated, but for all that it’s almost comforting on some level. Childhood meals and all that, she supposes; there are plenty of more flavorful foods available in Nen Tsiash, and Rey Kéanaivar, high-profile dragon jockey, eats nearly all of them and enjoys them too. But here—just outside her AT-AT—she doesn’t mind the rehydrated meals from Niima Outpost so very much.

Over the hill, there are sounds; a droid, she thinks, and she only hesitates a moment. That moment is long enough for Ellie to nudge her with her nose.

“I’m going, I’m going,” she says, and she grabs her staff and heads off.

The droid, it turns out, is a BB unit; Rey scowls and snaps at the scavenger who’d picked it up until they relent, and then she tries to send the droid off to town.

It follows her home instead.

“Fine, then,” she says. “Follow me if you must. I’ll take you to Niima Outpost in the morning; if you can’t find your master there I suppose we can go to Nen Tsiash after that.”

The droid chirps happily, and Rey sighs.

“Ellie, this is BB-8,” she says when she gets home. “BB-8, this is Ellie.”

Her dragon regards the little round droid with a critical eye, while he chirps again, and Rey heads in to go to bed.

In the morning, she goes into town, the BB unit trailing after her. Ellie keeps her distance; dragons are never very popular within settlements, even when their jockeys are lauded—and Niima Outpost is too small to very much care about the who’s who of dragon racing.

Unkar Plutt’s eyes light up when he lays them on BB-8, of course, but Rey shakes her head and slaps down her credits.

“I don’t trade in parts anymore,” she says. “You know that. The droid’s not for sale.”

He shakes his head. “So be it,” he says. “Wouldn’t have taken you for the sort to let all that fancy jockeying go to your head.”

Rey doesn’t dignify that with a response; instead she turns to go.

She and BB-8 make their way through town, but his master is nowhere to be found—not too surprising, to be honest. Niima Outpost is small.

Of course, that’s when they get attacked. Their attackers aren’t trying to hurt Rey; they just seem to want to get BB-8 away from her. Briefly, she considers whistling for Ellie—but Ellie, for all that Rey loves her dearly, is still a dragon. And calling a dragon down in a place like this—against human opponents—is a questionable idea at best.

She fends them off. Being as young and popular as she is—well, not everyone likes a hotshot young jockey. Especially not the former champions she’s knocked off their pedestals.

That, of course, brings her to another turning point: the young man—who isn’t BB-8’s master—in the jacket, which _does_ belong to his master.

Rey only gets a jumbled explanation, one that hardly makes sense, and then she hears a sharp whine overhead and looks up.

TIE fighters. _Multiple_ TIE fighters, all converging on Niima Outpost for some unknown reason.

“They’ve found me,” says her new human companion.

BB-8 trills his alarm that they’ve found _him_.

Rey sighs, rolls her eyes, and grabs her senra whistle from her belt. “Cover your ears,” she tells Finn, and waits a half-second for him to do so; then she puts the whistle to her lips and blows, sharp and long and flickering on the edges of human perception.

Then she grabs his hand—she isn’t certain whether Ellie will treat him as friend or foe if Rey doesn’t make it perfectly clear, under circumstances like these—and races out into the open, BB-8 behind them struggling to keep up. She can’t slow down for him; Ellie can grab him, even if he’s a bit farther behind.

They cross over the edge of town, and Ellie swoops down before them, white wings and scales blinding in the sunlight.

Behind her Finn gasps. “That’s a _dragon!”_

“Yes, I know,” she snaps back. “Now get _on._ ”

They scramble up. It’s a good thing Ellie started truly growing into herself last year. If not for that, Rey isn’t sure if Finn would have fit behind her so easily. There’s no saddle on Ellie’s back, which is probably unfortunate for Rey’s clothes, but she isn’t worried; Ellie has never let her fall.

Finn holds her waist so tightly she can hardly breathe. Rey rests her hands on the blunted scales that run along the sides of Ellie’s neck.

“Don’t forget the droid,” she says softly. Ellie flicks a single ear back at her, and then they’re off, Rey and Finn on Ellie’s back, BB-8 clutched in one silver claw.

Rey has ridden Ellie through countless races and training courses. She’s ridden her out over the moonless desert, flown through the bellies of downed starships, skidded through gaps that could barely accommodate them at top speed.

This is nothing like any of that. Always before she’s trusted Ellie to get her out in one piece. She still trusts Ellie to get her out in one piece, but—

This time they have TIEs on their tail. And dragon’s scales are tough, but their wings can be fragile; either way, dragons don’t come with _shields_. They’re going to have to dodge every shot.

They manage to stay unscathed for a good long while, racing out into the desert and into the graveyard of ships to be found there. Out in the open, the TIEs are faster than Ellie, Rey thinks, but not within the ships—not only do they know them better, a dragon can dodge around obstacles that a hard spaceship has no hope of avoiding. They lose most of their pursuers that way, but there’s still two left, closing quickly on them, and the sunlight is dead ahead.

“I hope you’ve got a plan,” Rey mumbles, her hands gripping Ellie’s scales hard enough that they’d probably bleed, were this at any other point on a dragon’s body. The wind whips her words away; Finn does not hear. That’s all right. Her words weren’t meant for him anyway.

A shiver ripples up her arms, and Rey swallows hard and readjusts her grip. She and Ellie have done this only once before, and Rey was trying out a mag-lock saddle that time, so there was no chance she would fall—but she trusts Ellie. If they can do this quick enough, it’ll be _fine_.

Somehow, even in her own head that doesn’t quite sound convincing.

“Don’t let go!” she shouts to Finn, loud enough to be heard over the wind. She isn’t wearing her flight goggles—after all she wasn’t planning to _fly_ today—and she can barely see at this point.

“I wasn’t going to!” he yells back.

There’s no more time for discussion after that; they’re at the edge of the ship, crossing back into the desert.

Ellie flies low and fast, as fast as Rey’s ever gone with her, but somehow her dragon puts on a last burst of speed, arcs _up_ , curls over the top—for a single moment that feels like an eternity, Rey hangs upside down at the zenith of Ellie’s arc, only her momentum keeping her from falling to the desert sands below her—she breathes white flames that engulf the TIEs—and then she finishes the arc, and they’re away, flying low over the desert.

“What _was_ that?” Finn cries next to her ear.

“Dragonfire,” she calls back, though she doesn’t really think that’s an answer for the question he meant.

And after that they don’t talk anymore; it’s rather difficult on a quickly-moving dragon, after all, and they’ll have time enough for it later.

* * *

They land in the Sanalra Hills outside of Nen Tsiash. Rey looks around, scans the skies; as far as she can tell, there’s no one around, so she leads Finn and BB-8 down into the caves. Ellie comes too, of course; she’s getting a bit big for it but she still fits without being completely cramped.

“What is this place?” Finn asks as they go through the caves.

“Old cave system,” says Rey. “I found it when I was little—no one comes down here. And it’ll get us pretty close to Nen Tsiash without being spotted.”

“Oh.”

“So,” Rey says after a long awkward silence, “you’re with the Resistance?”

“I—yeah,” says Finn.

“What’s that like?” she asks.

“Busy.”

“Oh.”

The conversation dies once again, and they keep on in silence. Rey isn’t sure if it’s more or less comfortable than the last one.

In an hour or two they reach the lowest main chamber of the cave system. Rey has wondered more than once if this place was carved by some sapient being, rather than being natural; this lowest chamber has always made her think that, with its sharply octagonal shape.

“We can stay here for a while,” she says, “until the heat dies down a bit. There’s an underground creek down here, and I’ve stored dried foods here before.” She sighs. “I hope I haven’t torched too many sponsorship opportunities,” she mumbles, more to herself than to Finn.

“Sponsorship opportunities?”

“Yeah,” says Rey. “How do you not—right, you’re from off-world, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Dragon racing is big on Jakku, but she supposes it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that off-world Resistance fighters don’t know about it. “I’m a jockey,” she says. “Me and Ellie—we’re a trick pair, we’ve been racing since I was little. But, you know, no one _pays_ you to fly in a race—you have to pay an entrance fee more often than not. All the money is in the prizes and in sponsorships.” She hesitates, then continues—if they go into Nen Tsiash together, it’s not like he isn’t going to find out. “I’m, ah, kind of. A little bit famous, in the racing scene.”

“What were you doing in a place like that, then?” Finn’s voice is even; he isn’t judging her, she’s fairly sure.

“I grew up just outside of Niima Outpost,” she says. “I go back in the off-season; it’s… quieter, I suppose.” _It’s where my parents will come to find me,_ she doesn’t say. That’s not the sort of thing people want to hear _Rey Kéanaivar_ say, and that habit is hard to shake.

Ellie stretches her wings out, then curls up against one of the walls and closes her eyes. She’s tired from their flight across the sands, and her fire breath is, really, quite underused. 

“You can sleep,” says Rey. “We’ll be here for a while, anyway.”

“We can’t stay, though,” says Finn suddenly. “We lost our pursuit—we can’t just stay, though.”

“Why not? They’ll lose interest soon enough, and we’ll be able to leave without any trouble.” Rey shrugs. She’s never attracted the attention of the First Order before; but she’s just a dragon racer. No one of any importance to them, she’s certain.

Finn shakes his head. “They won’t lose interest,” he says. “The droid—he has part of a map, showing the way to Luke Skywalker.”

Rey stills. “Luke Skywalker,” she says quietly. “ _The_ Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth.”

He shakes his head. “So did I, at first—but he’s not, and this droid needs to get back to the Resistance as soon as possible.”

She sighs. “All right, then. All right. We can work with that. Are you wanted in particular, without the droid in the picture?”

“…maybe,” says Finn after a pause. “But probably less.”

“Then wait here a moment,” says Rey, and turns to go to a side chamber. It isn’t just food she’s stored down here—she has some cloaks, too, and clothing like what she wore as a scavenger child.

 _Rey Kéanaivar_ wears a sleek racing outfit, designed by some sponsor or other. _Rey Kéanaivar_ wears her hair in three distinctive buns down the back of her head. In the off season she doesn’t wear the racing suits, of course, but she still has a style she’s somewhat known for.

The clothes she keeps here are different, and after she changes into them she lets down her hair; her neck will be hot and sweaty under it, but at least this way she’s not too likely to be recognized by anyone who only knows her from racing.

She emerges to find Finn sitting there, leaning against the wall.

“We can follow the cave system towards Nen Tsiash,” she says. “But we probably shouldn’t take Ellie or BB-8 with us—you saw how fast they recognized him, and cities don’t like dragons—but you should be able to get passage off-world at least, and I assume you’ll be able to find your way back from there.”

Finn hesitates, looking like he’s about to say something, but after a long moment he nods. “Lead on, then.”

* * *

Nen Tsiash is one of the bigger cities on Jakku. That isn’t necessarily saying all that much—there aren’t too many cities overall—but still, it’s big enough that Rey hated it as a child. She still isn’t overly fond of it. If you want to get off-world, though, especially if you need to avoid any official interference, this is the place for it.

Rey isn’t sure if a Resistance fighter needs to avoid Republic notice, but out here it isn’t as if there’s a strong presence anyway.

“This way,” she says to Finn, leading him deeper into the city towards the spaceport and the cantinas surrounding it. If Evia knew that Rey was _here_ of all places, she’d probably either kill her or wash her hands of her completely, but Rey isn’t a little girl anymore.

Finn follows her, wide-eyed and a little skeptical, but he doesn’t object when she leads the way into one of the cleaner-looking places. It’s one of the few places she can look at with any kind of confidence—she knows the proprietor here, at least.

The tall, lean togruta man behind the bar looks up as they enter, and Rey grins at him.

“Iksan!” she says when they’re close enough that it isn’t necessary to shout. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Fancy seeing _you_ here, more like,” he says. “Did you get tired of being poison to a betting man?”

“No,” says Rey. “But my friend here is looking for a ship, and I figured you’d know these things better than I do.”

“I imagine I do. What kind of passage?”

“Off-world,” says Finn at once. “Me and a droid and—Rey?”

She shakes here head. “I’m not leaving. I’ve got a good thing going here, but thanks for asking.”

He frowns a little, but turns back to Iksan. “Just me and my droid, then—he isn’t too big.”

“And the price range?”

“Nothing that’ll break my budget,” Rey interjects. She doesn’t exactly want to spend her own hard-earned money here, but she doubts that crash-landed Resistance fighters would be carrying around too many credits, and, well. It _is_ for a good cause.

“You could try Ne-Varin’s place,” says Iksan, after thinking it over for a moment. “I sent another fellow over there not too long ago, actually—he was looking for a ship _and_ a droid, so maybe you’ll be a decent match for each other.” He chuckles a little at his own joke, but Finn’s eyes widen slightly.

“Where’s Ne-Varin’s place, then?” asks Rey.

Iksan sighs at their lack of response to his joke—though it wasn’t very clever, his never have been—and sends them on their way. Finn doesn’t say anything; Rey glances over at him, but decides not to interrupt his thoughts.

Ne-Varin’s place, it turns out, is tucked into a little side street and looks distinctly less legitimate than Iksan’s cantina. It’s darker, rowdier, and the clientele seem to be eyeing her and Finn in a much less friendly way.

Neither of them knows exactly how or where to start, so they make their way to the bar, where a single figure sits—a dark-haired human man.

When they draw even with him, Finn gasps.

“Poe!” he says. “Poe, you’re all right!”

Poe’s head snaps up, and his eyes widen at the sight of Finn. “You made it, buddy!”

They’re attracting too much attention, Rey thinks, and that only gets worse when the two men spontaneously hug in the middle of the place.

* * *

She’s right about that—not long after, Ne-Varin herself kicks them out. As they meander down the streets, looking for another likely place to find a ship with passage available on it, Rey puts the pieces together from their conversation—escaped from the First Order in a damaged TIE fighter, crashed on Jakku, neither of them realized the other had made it. BB-8 is Poe’s droid.

By then, the sun is starting to go down, and Rey pauses in the street. They haven’t, so far, had any luck finding anyone who can take passengers in a direction Finn and Poe approve of, and she doesn’t think they’re likely to at night either.

“We should go back to the caves,” says Rey. “We’re not getting anywhere with this, and we’re all tired.”

Neither man is happy about that, but in the end they agree—Rey thinks it helped that she pointed out to Poe that his droid was in the caves, and they needed to go by there to get him anyway.

They’re halfway across the desert that stretches between Nen Tsiash and the furthest extent of the Sanalra Caverns when it happens. One moment, Rey is walking normally, the moonlit sands still and steady around her. The next—

The world shifts under her feet, and she stumbles—

A great flare of _something_ , she doesn’t know what, she’s never felt anything like this before—suddenly it’s hard to breathe—a wave of some unidentifiable emotion, fearpainhatefear _fearloss **despair** —_

And then there’s nothing at all. The desert stills. All that’s left is Rey’s sudden blinding headache, and near her Poe is helping Finn back to his feet. He looks no better than she feels; Poe is looking between them, some unreadable expression on his face—there’s concern, mixed with something she can’t identify.

“What _was_ that,” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” says Finn, voice hoarse. “Something bad. Something _really_ bad.”

Rey can only nod. Poe’s face is shifting quickly, concern morphing into grim determination. “I have some ideas. None of them are good.”

And that’s when the anger washes over Rey, white-hot and screaming to be let out, and her legs fold beneath her—she wants to scream her rage, but something is wrong. This isn’t—

It isn’t _her_ fury that she’s feeling. Not too far away, though, a white shimmer emerges from the ground, from a cave entrance—

Élyutéanin spreads her wings and breathes a stream of fire into the air before letting out a furious screech that echoes across the desert. Then she’s coming towards them; Poe curses and Finn grabs her arm, but Rey is not afraid.

“Don’t worry,” she says grimly, standing up. “It isn’t _us_ she’s angry at.”

Ellie lands near them, more harshly than usual, before setting down BB-8 with surprising gentleness. The little droid quickly rolls over to Poe, chattering at him.

The dragon’s breath is a rumbling growl down in her throat; Rey steps towards her. She can still feel the rage simmering there, the anger that allows for nothing else, but her own mind is clear now, able as she is to separate Ellie’s emotions from her own.

“I know you’re angry,” she says to Ellie, slowly putting her arms around her neck and leaning her head against the cool white scales. “I _know_ you’re angry. I felt—whatever it was—too. But I don’t know what it was. Do you?”

Ellie has never used _words_. That is not a dragon’s way. But she can _tell_ Rey things, after a fashion—this time, she doesn’t try to tell her anything. She simply shows her.

“It was a system,” she says dully when it’s over. “All the planets in a system—they’re just. Gone.”

Even in the moonlight, she can see that Poe has turned pale. “Do you know which?”

“No.”

“I can guess,” says Finn darkly, “with Starkiller Base being what it is.”

“Hosnian,” says Poe, and Finn nods. “Has to be.”

“Hosnian?”

“Hosnian Prime is the seat of the Republic’s government,” says Poe. “Or, well, possibly _was_.”

Beneath Rey’s hands, Ellie is still trembling in rage.

“Change of plans.” Poe straightens up, crosses his arms. “I need to get back out there. You two are welcome to come or not, but I’m going. Don’t come if you don’t want to see someone steal a ship.”

“I—” says Rey, then stops. She doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to leave Jakku, where her parents left her, where they could find her once more. But _Ellie_ wants to go, and a dragon at your side is nothing to sneeze at. Ellie wants to go, to rain down fire and death upon those who dared do this, and Rey can’t find it in herself to object to those ideas. She only wishes it could be some other girl than her to do this, someone who wasn’t waiting for her family to return—but it isn’t. It’s just her, and her dragon, and Élyutéanin will never forgive her if she doesn’t go.

“All right, then,” she finds herself saying. “But you should know—we’re going to need a ship big enough for a dragon, too.”

Poe looks confused for a moment, then nods sharply. “Finn?”

“I’m in,” says Finn, though he seems more hesitant than he ought to given that he’s already with the Resistance.

“Then let’s go steal ourselves a ship,” says Poe. “I’m glad you’re all in—with you here, the First Order won’t know what hit them.”


End file.
